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Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Media Empires of Egypt : The King is dead , Long live the Queen

In the past three years , Steel mogul Ahmed Abu-Hashima deserved the title “Egypt’s Robert Murdoch” as by far he was the king of a huge empire with over 16 companies working in all types of media in Egypt including a TV network in his early 40s to complete the saga and his mystery of fast speed rise.

The close to the regime businessman did not give any indication that he would leave that media realm in Egypt anytime soon but surprisingly he did it this week in the same way he entered it: suddenly.
With no introductions or previous announcement, a new financial investment company announced that it has acquired all the shares of Abu-Hashima in Egyptian Media group this week
In a very short statement that including too many surprises the announcement came late Monday night.

“Eagle Capital for financial investment” has acquired the shares of businessman Ahmed Abu Hashima. The CEO of Eagle Capital Dalia Khorshid stated that the acquisition is the first business deal for the company. She also said that the acquisition reflected her company’s interest in that strategic sector (media) that affects the citizen on a daily basis. The short statement added the company appointed former head of Egyptian Radio and Television Union “ERTU” Osama El-Sheikh as the new CEO of Egyptian Media group replacing Abu-Hashima who resigned from the post.

The statement did not include any mention of how much Eagle Capital for investments bought the shares of Abu Hashima.
The young king of media left the realm and there was a new Queen with a veteran Sharif in town, hail the Queen.

Disclaimer: Now a big portion of that long post I have been working on for months in an attempt to decode the Egyptian Media map currently in an attempt to understand who is running the show and why. Spoilers: If you are following the Egyptian internal affairs very well, you already guessed.

Old faces, new roles

There has been no official website or Facebook page available online for Eagle Capital for Financial Investment whose headquarters are in Cairo’s Fifth Settlement.
It is not registered in the Egyptian stock market.There is nothing in the Egyptian news archives about it.
According to Misr Al-Arabia website, Eagle Capital for Financial Investment was founded in 2016.
Now, we do not know who REALLY owns or founded this company.

News reports speak about two potential buyers: A group of Gulf investors owns 40% of Eagle Capital and the Egyptian General Intelligence service.

Dalia Khorshid in her official ministerial profile

Misr Al-Arabia and Mada Misr quoted veteran Egyptian veteran publisher Hisham Kassem saying that the Egyptian General intelligence service did not only stand behind Eagle Capital but stands behind Egyptian Media group as well.

The 1975-Cairo University graduate joined the ERTU where he worked there for decades.
In 1993, He left the ERTU and helping in founding and managing Saudi-owned ART satellite network in its prime. Since then, he began his long career with Privately owned-Arab TV networks in countries like Kuwait.
In 2001, he returned back to Egypt where he helped in founding Dream TV.
In 2007, he returned to ERTU. In 2009 he became the head of ERTU until February 2011 where he resigned following the January revolution. He was arrested in the same month along with ex-minister of information Anas El-FIky for charges related to corruption and squandering public funds.
In January 2013, he was released on bail. In the same year, he headed shortly Dream TV network before resigning months later.
In July 2016, he headed Al-Assama TV network before leaving it three months later. In September 2014, the corruption charges were dropped against the famous TV executive.
In November, Osama El-Sheikh traveled to Saudi Arabia where he was appointed as a consultant to develop and modernize the Saudi State-TV network in the new MBS era.

All the companies under the Egyptian Media Group umbrella including the management were surprised that they got new bosses. Most of them even have not updated their management information on their official websites.

Egyptian Media Empire

The Egyptian Media empire started in 2013.
In January 2013, Ahmed Abu-Hashima and Alaa El-Khaky “the co-owner of Al-Nahar TV network” acquired the shares of businessman Soliman Amar and Mohamed Al-Amin “owner of CBC network” in Youm 7 news website and newspaper.

During then Abu-Hashima was accused of being too close to the Muslim Brotherhood especially his business partners were Qataris. His move was regarded by some as an attempt to “Brotherhood-ize” the media. It was said even that he divorced his wife Lebanese bombshell and singer Haifa Wahhabi because she did not “fit” the conservative image of the brotherhood.

In July 2016, Egyptian Media acquired DotMisr news website in a very big drama that puzzles me up till now.
At first, it was announced that Abu Hashima acquired the website that was originally founded by Emirati money then his lawyer denied it as tens of journalists in the website were fired suddenly without having any of their financial rights.
The intelligence officer turned-into/and Media mogul Yasser Salim who used to own DotMisr stated in the same month that the real owner of the site then was “Egyptian Media group” since the beginning of July. Then it became a fact that Egyptian Media owned DotMisr.
FYI, the name of Yasser Selim will meet a lot whenever you do a thorough research about media or elections after July 2013. He is a friend of Abu-Hashima and he owns some shares in Youm7 yet he is rarely mentioned as a co-owner.
His company “Black and White” in partnership with Sawiris’ Promomedia have been the advertising agencies of Youm 7 since 2014 but it is also rarely mentioned as Promomedia is more famous.

In the same month our man from Port Said, Abu Hashima who started his career in steel business in 2002 acquiredPOD agency for PR.

In the same month, he acquired what was once weekly opposition newspaper Sawt Al-Oma and its sister tabloid Ain from their owner-publisher Ahmed Fahmy for allegedly LE 12 million.
Sawt Al-Oma newspaper is currently a Pro-regime newspaper in what of the ironies in the country.
In November 2016, Egyptian Media group acquired 50% of the shares in Synergy advertising agency and production company. Yasser Salim’s Black and White agency had a partnership with Synergy since May 2016 according to news reports. They produce films and TV series.

In early 2017, Egyptian Media group acquired Egypt’s oldest and first privately-owned magazine Egypt today “ET” and its economic sister Business today from IBA Media. ET is turned in to an online English news website.
You guess what happened to ET when I tell you that it is headed by Moatez Abdel Fattah. The online archives of that important magazine disappeared under the new management.

How much did Abu Hashima or Egyptian Media group pay for those companies in 2016 alone? Nobody really knows.
Money is not mentioned in the official statements or news releases for reasons beyond me. Is it the fear of taxation authority? God only knows.
God only knows also what those acquisitions aim to or who stands behind them for real.
One thing for sure, the Egyptian people do not care much for those acquisitions as they no longer trust the media as before.
Now, Abu-Hashima is officially out of the media market suddenly, he is no longer its king. It is Dalia Khurshid who is currently Queen of a media Empire.

3 comments:

This analysis and reporting is valuable in a media-free society. Here it doesn't matter, really it doesn't matter who owns, sells, acquires, or consolidates media assets. In every case, the marching orders and talking points to the media owner will come from the same telephone number.

Thank You for your comment Please keep it civilized here, racist and hateful comments are not accepted The Comments in this blog with exclusion of the blog's owner does not represent the views of the blog's owner.